The invention generally relates to computers and computer software, and in particular to methods, systems, and computer program products for auditing transactions associated with the sale of travel services.
In the travel industry, airline tickets are often sold through an indirect seller, such as an online travel agency or a validating carrier. The indirect seller will typically check for available flights that satisfy a traveler's itinerary and, once matching flights are found, book the flights for the traveler. As part of this booking process, the indirect seller may collect payment from the traveler for the tickets. To cover the operating carrier's charges for providing transportation services, the indirect seller provides a portion of the collected payment to the operating carrier.
To ensure that indirect sellers are selling tickets in compliance with restrictions and rules relating to pricing of the ticket, these transactions may occasionally be audited. An audit may verify whether the amounts of the fare, taxes, and commission match the restrictions and rules in place regarding the details of the ticket sold. Because of the magnitude of annual worldwide revenue generated by the airline industry, correcting even small discrepancies across all tickets sold could result in a significant recovery of otherwise lost revenue.
If an audit indicates that the indirect seller has not properly charged for a ticket, the auditing carrier may attempt to recover the discrepancy by issuing an Agency Debit Memo (ADM). However, generating and issuing an ADM can add significant management costs to the transaction. For this reason, carriers may accept small errors in pricing rather than issue an ADM to recover the discrepancy. Thus, the cost of issuing the ADM may provide an opportunity for indirect sellers to consistently price tickets slightly below the correct price without incurring a penalty. In other cases, indirect sellers may unknowingly violate a pricing rule of the carrier for modifications made to a ticket in good-faith, causing the carrier to issue an ADM that could have otherwise been avoided.
Thus, carriers and indirect sellers have a need for improved systems, methods, and computer program products for auditing transactions, reducing the number of ADMs, and recovering discrepancies to reduce costs associated with incorrect pricing of travel services.